"Outbreak" 2

I did some additional work on my dream “Outbreak” using the tarot. The dream was about asylum seekers who were illegal in my country. They kept escaping from their hidingplace, outgoing and playful. I tried to lock them up, because the police came to search for them.

I worked with the Universal Fantasy Tarot and the first question I asked was: “What do I need to look at?” The answer was Two of Cups.

Often this card –especially in dream work– means to me meeting my shadow. The person that is literally in the shadow, is the male figure.

The next question I pulled from a deck with spread-positions. The question I’ve drawn was: “My male/active side that wants to come to the light.” To that question I pulled Nine of Cups.

A roaring dragon is depicted on the card, his paws are hanging down lame; he appears angry to me, but his anger leads to nothing. He cannot make it useful somehow, not using the appropriate instruments (lame arms).

I’ve wondered for a long time: with what in my dream can I associate this dragon? For a while I looked into the possibility to pair it with the asylum seekers. They were more like children to me than men, but in my drawing abut the dream there is red focused energy coming from the asylum seekers which looks male and active (you cannot see it that good in the scanned version). Besides that, male energy can be playful. There is for example a playful male image in the Greek pantheon that expresses this: the goat-god Pan. He is playful and a nuisance, just as the asylum seekers. But then again, the dragon is not a playful type and not childlike. Thus, he cannot represent them. If the dragon does not symbolize the asylum seekers, then it is the ‘me’ in the dream, who desperate tries to imprison them, and is busy bolting doors forever in the dream. For that I need male energy.

I think these cards, drawn in respons to my dream, teach me to reach out to my shadow, to retrieve my male energy from it, and to use that energy wise and effectively, not by roaring, but by starting to draw some boundaries, and say what I desire.